You know, even non-traumatized children need therapeutic parenting. They do. I wish I had it when I was growing up even though my childhood was ok.Thanks for the Crazy and the Voice vids, they are sinking into my brain as I work today. When my kids come home from school I am going to try really hard to do the opposite trick, and the crazy trick. I never realized how many times I let myself get stuck in arguments that were escalating and not going anywhere...not anywhere good, anyhow. Thanks for putting your face and voice out there :)

Wow, finally something that has been coming naturally for me. I've always distracted with crazy. I just thought it was because I was/am. We all have our areas where we excel. The quiet voice thing was not always one of those. Great info C!

You are the best, Christine! Thank you for sharing your heart and your passion and all your wisdom...and for making us all laugh in the process. I'm guilty of getting stuck in the bonkers of this adventure that I forget to be silly. In fact, there are days when there isn't a shred of "yellow" left in me.

Christine,Thank you so much for doing these videos. There were several times over the past few days that my daughter was about to start raging and I used the advice in these different videos and was able to calm her very quickly. Thank you so so much!

I continue in amazement. With my theatre/music background I can do crazy. I can do the voices and the bizarre stuff, once I get over my anger at getting pulled in one more time. Great stuff, Christine.

I just start singing at them--everything I am trying to say or wanting to say and then look at them expectantly until they sing back. Hard to be mad when singing!

ldw--sometimes I make my kids take a number just like at the deli counter. I point to the little one and say "ONE" and they rush to claim the next number. Then I announce something like "now serving kid #5" and walk away. Buys me some time.

I make up knock-knock jokes. They will be wailing and I will say 'Knock knock'. There is something about it they can't resist. They just HAVE to ask 'Who's there'. Then I make up the dumbest joke I can think of and laugh hysterically at myself. Did you know that even a four year old can roll their eyes! Then I challenge them to top my joke. Screaming turns into laughing. Whew. My last shred of sanity is saved for another day.

I can't even REMEMBER the last time I was silly! Why didn't you make this video like forever ago, lol! Although I have done the singng thing recently. I had never done it before....but somehow it just fit the moment.

Awesome! Just like the book, "99 ways to drive your child sane". We had a "quack" day at our house. Instead of saying 'mom', they had to say quack. No "quack" meant I didn't acknowledge they were talking to me. It's hard to get mad or stay mad when you have to say "quack" before you bawl your mom out! I love it!!

crap i write about

years of drivel

"My story is important not because it is mine, God knows, but because if I tell it anything like right, the chances are you will recognize that in many ways it is also yours.
Maybe nothing is more important than that we keep track, you and I,of these stories of who we are and where we have come from and the people we have met along the way because it is precisely through these stories, in all their particularity, as I have long believed and often said, that God makes himself known to each of us most powerfully and personally."